


Walls

by thegraytigress



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Heartbreak, Hurt/Comfort, Natasha Romanov Feels, Natasha Romanov Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-13
Updated: 2015-06-13
Packaged: 2018-04-04 04:06:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4125000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegraytigress/pseuds/thegraytigress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha's been staring at walls. On the surface, she's okay. On the inside, she's bleeding. Sequel to "Splinters".</p>
            </blockquote>





	Walls

**Author's Note:**

> **DISCLAIMER:** _Captain America: The Winter Soldier_ and _Avengers: Age of Ultron_ are the properties of Walt Disney Studios, Paramount Studios, and Marvel Studios. This work was created purely for enjoyment. No money was made, and no infringement was intended.
> 
>  **RATING:** T (for language)
> 
>  **AUTHOR'S NOTE:** This is the sequel/companion piece to ["Splinters"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4087666). It's a little tag for _Age of Ultron_. As "Splinters" did for Steve, this story delves into Natasha's thoughts about her recent relationship choices and why she might have acted the way she acted. While this isn't quite as angsty as "Splinters", it's not all happy times and fluff, either. Still, this ends up with Romanogers (romantic, but you could read it as platonic, too). Enjoy!

Natasha was staring at walls.

She’d been doing it all day.  For days, if she could stop lying to herself.  Every moment of downtime, every second where she hadn’t been busy doing something for the new team at this new facility in this new age, she’d drifted off.  She’d let herself go, let herself slip away and frankly check out.  It was nice.  Comforting.  She wasn’t thinking when she did it.  Not really.  Her mind was mostly (and thankfully) blank every time she let it wander.  Thinking was too much.  Too painful.  Too… _embarrassing._   She had to admit that, if only to herself.  What she’d done, how she acted…  It was bothering her more than she wanted to accept.

She sat on the mats of the training facility, alone and glad for it.  The huge room was empty, equipment idle and darkened with early evening, and she was facing the far wall where the shadows were draped the thickest.  The echo of shouts, of commands, of a team struggling to work together and learn each other’s strengths and weaknesses, filled the heavy silence.  An untouched bottle of water was next to her, condensation slowly collecting on its exterior and rolling down like sweat to puddle on the floor.  Sweat or tears.  She couldn’t remember the last time she’d cried.  She wanted to now.  She thought she should, but it wouldn’t come.  She couldn’t muster the energy.  She couldn’t _care._ She’d been trained to be resilient, immune to grief and guilt, harder than marble.  Unbreakable.  She didn’t feel unbreakable now.  So much had happened.  SHIELD was back.  Maybe it had never been gone at all.  The team had come together only to be torn apart again.  Innocent people had died, though not as many as what could have been.  The world had seen the Avengers for what they were.  Not monsters.  At least, not entirely.  A shield against evil, but a blundering mess of clashing personalities and conflicting ideals that sometimes created as many problems as it solved.  Nobody had emerged from this disaster quite unscathed.  On the surface, they were all strong, purposeful, reaffirmed in the duties and beliefs they held most dear.  On the inside, however…  She was bleeding.

What had she been thinking?  She’d wanted…  She didn’t know what she’d wanted.  When SHIELD had fallen, she’d lost her anchor.  She’d found herself without an identity for the first time in her life.  No mission.  No handler.  No irrefutable voice telling her what was right and what was wrong.  Who to trust.  Who to kill.  She hadn’t realized when she’d left DC after the battle with the Insight helicarriers how difficult it would be to find a new cover.  She’d been so breezy about it, brazen and flippant and coy.  She’d downplayed how daunting it truly was, because _somehow_ it had seemed simple at the time.  Go out into the vast, uncharted world as a new person, _her own_ person who was freed of her chains to the Red Room and her debt to SHIELD.  Live a life worthy of living.  Build a new and better existence than the old one had been.  Wash the slate clean.  Wipe the red from her ledger.  Embrace the fact that her secrets belonged to the world now, rather than to SHIELD or even to herself.  Accept that and do _good_ with it.

It hadn’t taken her long at all to realize that she had no idea how to do that.  She’d wandered around Europe and Russia, hunting her own ghosts, expunging the last bloody trails of her past as it tried to catch up with her.  Accomplishing that hadn’t been as cathartic as she’d hoped.  It hadn’t filled this newfound hole in her heart where _purpose_ had once been.  Putting her demons to rest hadn’t even eased her guilty conscience.  She felt no more certain of what she was, of where she was, of _who_ she was, than she had before she’d left on her journey.  That had turned her angry.  Frustrated.  Discouraged.  She hadn’t known how to deal with those things, so she’d buried them down deep and returned to New York, to the Avengers assembling in a new world without the yoke of SHIELD around their necks.  She’d come back only to find everything she’d tried to escape was all still there.  This lifetime of atrocities committed by her, the damage done to her, the lies and half-truths she’d spoken…  She didn’t know how to be anything or anyone other than what they’d made her to be.  A seductress.  An assassin.  A murderer and a manipulator.  A spy.  _Black Widow._

Not an Avenger.

_“We have no place in the world.”_

Natasha closed her eyes.  She was disgusted with herself.  With this.  With staring uselessly like she was trapped in some sort of _lovesick, heartbroken stupor_.  Was that all she was good for now?  Trying to make some sense of what she’d done?  She was listless, lethargic.  Lost.  And she was frustrated with herself, irate with this deplorable malaise, but even that wasn’t strong enough to knock down these walls she was building around her heart.  _Get up.  Work.  Put yourself back together.  This is stupid, and you’re better than it.  Throw yourself back into it._ She wasn’t sure that would do her any good.  Frankly, she’d tried it before, and she’d been burned.  She’d thrown herself into the Avengers when she’d come back from Europe, searching for _something_ to help her figure out who she was, and she’d blundered right into Bruce.

She definitely did not want to think about him.

“Staring at walls again?”

Natasha turned at the familiar, teasing voice.  Steve stood at the entrance of the training room, arms folded over his chest, shoulder against the door frame.  He’d changed out of his uniform, opting for a comfortable pair of well-worn jeans and a black t-shirt that revealed all too well what made him Captain America.  Even as her eyes appreciatively took him in, she realized that wasn’t entirely true.  Captain America was far more than just a physique teeming with muscles and an infallible constitution and a commanding voice.  Her gaze lingered longer than it should have so she looked away.  She’d seen it before.  Once, not so long ago during a harried helicopter flight over the wreckage of SHIELD, she’d touched it.  She’d felt it.  Under all her lies and layers, she knew she wanted it.

But he didn’t know.  At least, she didn’t think he did.  He walked inside, strolling with an air that wasn’t entirely confident but wasn’t nervous, either.  It was simply calm and unassuming.  That was who he was.  Calm and unassuming.  Sweet.  Very much out of place in this world filled with war and evil and varying shades of gray.  “If the one you were looking at earlier was interesting, this one must be absolutely fascinating,” he quipped.  She didn’t want to – it wasn’t even that funny, for God’s sake – but she smiled faintly, dropping her gaze and shaking her head.  Emboldened, he came closer, and she summoned up the courage to look at him again.  Really look.  The last time they’d talked there’d been so much pain his voice, so much anguish in his eyes.  She knew she’d made whatever hell he’d been suffering worse that night on Clint’s porch.  But now his eyes were clear, peaceful, and he had a little grin on his lips.  It reminded her so much of how he’d been in DC that it was hard to hold his gaze.  He was seemingly untouchable.

She could never be that good.  She’d already failed.

_“You never fail.”_

He hesitated a moment.  Then he dropped to a crouch in front of her, and suddenly she felt trapped.  There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.  No way to stop this conversation that _she didn’t want to have_ from happening.  Still, his voice was soft and his expression was gentle and open.  “What’s going on, Nat?”

 _Nat._   He hadn’t called her that since DC.  It was such a shock to hear it that she couldn’t think of what to say for a moment.  “I…  It’s nothing.”

Steve didn’t press.  He never did.  Not as a leader.  Not as a man.  And not as a friend.  Was that what he was to her?  Her friend?  He’d asked her to be that once, ironically on the tail of her passionately kissing him in broad daylight in a crowded mall.  She didn’t know what it meant to be someone’s friend.  She was many things to many people, but a friend was not among them.  When they’d parted ways in the cemetery last year, there’d been more between them.  A pull of some sort, undeniable and seemingly unbreakable.  _Attraction._   She knew how to act upon that (and she knew that she wanted to), but he seemingly didn’t, or he hadn’t wanted to, and that had left them saying goodbye with her offering a chaste, lingering kiss to his cheek and his tired smile.  He’d gone off to hunt for someone as well, searching for the Winter Soldier.  That had bothered her more than she cared to admit, both that he’d left when their world had fallen apart and that he’d left to save a monster.

That stirred the darkness inside her, unwanted feelings and thoughts swelling against the walls she’d again erected around them.  _Work.  Talk about work._ Work was safe.  With a brand new team to train, they had _a lot_ of work.  _Throw yourself back into it._   “What do you think about today?” she eventually asked.

He regarded her quizzically, cocking an eyebrow.  “What do you think?”

She shrugged.  “They’re definitely rough around the edges.  Maximoff’s going to have problems with adapting to a team environment.”

“Like the rest of us didn’t at first?” Steve said.  He smiled knowingly, and that took her right back to the Avengers’ infancy, when not killing _each other_ (let alone fighting together) had been a significant achievement.  Even when she and Steve had both worked for SHIELD, it had taken nearly dying together in that HYDRA bunker for them to trust each other.  _Trust._ Now they were leading the Avengers together.  He was their captain.  She was his second.  That had to mean something.  That had to mean their friendship wasn’t as dead as she feared.  She wanted it back, if her pride and pain would allow it.

He seemed to sense her disquiet.  “At least this time we don’t have to deal with Stark,” he joked.

She smiled but didn’t respond, dropping her gaze down to her lap.  The awkward silence crept back between them.  She didn’t want to do this right now.  Not with anyone, but especially not with him.  Walls were decent company.  They didn’t talk.  They didn’t falter or fail.  They didn’t judge.  They didn’t _care._ They were silent, sturdy.  Stable.  That was what she wanted.  Something stable.  Predictable.

What he said next was anything but.  “You want to get something to eat?”  His question was loud in the heavy quiet even though his voice was soft.  She forced herself to look over at him.  Disbelief left her feeling both dirty and relieved.  She knew she’d hurt him that night at Clint’s.  She’d hurt him by brushing him aside, by confiding in Bruce when he’d offered an ear and a shoulder to cry on first.  He shrugged.  “Apparently there are a couple of good restaurants around here.”

She couldn’t think.  And she definitely couldn’t eat.  “No.  No, it’s alright.  Thanks, though.”

That painful silence came right back, surging between them.  She didn’t know where to look now.  At the wall.  At him.  At her hands where they were clasped uselessly in her lap.  Everything was too painful.  She felt so lost, so groundless, falling weightlessly and being sucked down deep into an abyss that stretched endlessly beneath her.

This time she could almost anticipate what he was going to say.  She usually didn’t have trouble reading him.  He was an open book to her.  She didn’t have to worry about him lying or using her or cheating her.  Somehow, though, that made this moment even more uncomfortable and intimidating.  “Well, I’ll, uh, leave you to your staring.”  He smiled feebly.  “I’m here, if you want to talk.  I know you’re having a rough time with this.  With Clint gone.  And Bruce, too, so if you need to talk to someone–”

“I couldn’t.”

His face fractured in confusion.  There were hints of pain in his eyes, shards of hurt that were bright and bothersome.  This was an echo of what they’d argued about before.  “You can’t?”  The defensive tone of his voice wasn’t lost on either of them.  He lowered his gaze, struggling with something she didn’t want to understand.

And she didn’t want to tell him the truth.  There was the shame again.  The embarrassment.  What had she been thinking?  The last time she’d let down her guard and exposed her heart, the last time she’d lowered her defenses and let herself be vulnerable, she’d been hurt.  Feelings were weakness, as she’d been taught.  A way for her enemies to exploit her, damage her, break her.

_“You’ll break them.”_

_“Only the breakable ones.  You’re made of marble.”_

She wasn’t.  She was shale, less than that even.  She was pulled thin, brittle, and she was breaking.  Bruce had left her like this.  She’d opened herself to him, _let him in_ , and he hadn’t wanted her.

Her anger tore itself away from her, and she started talking.  “I…  I thought he could give me something I needed.  That maybe we could give each other what we needed.”  _Understanding.  Acceptance.  Identity._   “He was…”   _Wrong.  Too old for me.  Just as lost as I am.  Just as damaged.  He left me.  He couldn’t give me what I wanted.  He had nothing to give._   “…different from you.”

She hadn’t meant to say that.  Once the words were out of her mouth, though, she couldn’t get them back.  She wasn’t certain who was more surprised of the two of them.  She was the one who floundered to say something more, though.  “Different from you and different from Clint.  Closer to who I am.  I thought maybe that would help me find some way to...  I don’t know.”  She sighed, her voice fading.  “Some way to escape.”

“Escape?”

She didn’t like the tone of his voice.  All she could hear was disappointment.  But she was committed now.  She owed him this much.  And if she wanted to salvage the friendship that they’d let fall apart, the working relationship that they both knew they needed, she had to go through with this.  “The Red Room ruined my future,” she admitted.  “When they trained me and turned me into an assassin, they took away any chance I ever had to change my life.  To be something else, someone else.  Black Widow is a part of me.  I can’t get away from that.  I tried, but I can’t.  I can’t just change who I am.  I can’t find a new cover.  I can’t make amends.”  The words came faster.  “I can’t have children.  I can’t have a family.”  She expected his disgust at that.  She expected him to question her.  But he didn’t.  He just waited for her to go on.  She swallowed down the pain again.  She’d been doing that almost as much as she’d been staring at nothing.  “And I’ll never have a home, not like Clint has a home.  And it makes sense, because all this… _blackness_ in my past…  That’s no one’s burden but mine.  The world knows.  I have no secrets anymore.  I’m tainted.  I couldn’t bring that onto anyone else.  When I said Bruce was safe, I thought…”  She shook her head.  “I thought that if I’m that screwed up, only someone as screwed up as me could understand me.  So I told him the truth.”

She’d never cared so much for what someone thought as she did now with him.  Not even when she’d told Bruce.  She’d been attracted to Bruce for all the wrong reasons.  Desperation.  A strange, unprecedented desire for something wildly new.  Bruce was so different from most the men she knew.  He wasn’t a soldier or a spy.  He was a scientist, and yes, he could be something of a pessimist and a tad arrogant about his own brilliance, but he had a gentle heart.  He was so smart but so _careful_.  Powerful and violent.  That was raw and broken in a way that reminded her of herself.  Bruce was tainted, too.  And he intrigued her.  The _monster_ intrigued her, the feral part of her spirit wanting to understand that, to control it, to _own_ it, as if understanding and controlling and owning it could help her tame her own demons.  She’d flirted and manipulated and acted on desires that weren’t real.  She’d opened herself to him, expecting him to commiserate with her and accept and comfort her.  She’d been desperate to find some new ground in this groundless world.

And that ground had dissolved right out from under her feet the second she thought she was standing steady.  “I wanted to run away with him,” she admitted in a strained murmur.  “I thought we could be together, find some place in the world where we could be who we are without hurting anyone.  I wanted to go somewhere where nobody would know the truth about me.  That I’m…”  What?  _A fool.  Weak.  Nobody._ “…Black Widow.  I thought he could take me there.”

“Natasha…”

“But he didn’t want me.”  It actually hurt to say that out loud.  It _hurt_.  How could she have been so stupid?  How could she have been so _wrong_?

_“I have no place in the world.”_

Natasha closed her eyes.  Her frame wracked with a single shudder, the only sign of her pain.  She was far too strong to admit her weakness.  Not again.  Steve was silent.  Unmoving.  She could feel his eyes on her, heavy and powerful.  She wanted to look at him, but she couldn’t make herself.  This wasn’t simply caring about what he thought.  This was far more.  And it had been for weeks since they’d been reunited after DC.  He’d come back distant, troubled in a way that made her heart ache and throb for how he suffered.  And she’d come back more uncertain of herself than she ever imagined.  Whatever tenuous connection she’d felt between them during the SHIELD civil war had inexplicably and abruptly vanished, and she’d been too bothered, hurt, and ashamed to find out why.  It had been easier to let it go, to chase after someone else.  She’d convinced herself that it was for the best.

But it hadn’t been.  She’d gone down a bad road, set herself up for this pain.  She’d let down her walls, let someone _see_ her as she really was, and that person had only seen a reflection of himself, something he despised and feared.  And she feared, too.  She feared that she was letting herself get too low.  But more than that, right now she feared Steve’s disgust.  His rejection.  “I couldn’t tell you,” she finally said on a long breath.  _I couldn’t face the possibility that_ you _wouldn’t want me._

Bruce had been safe.  That night on Clint’s porch, she hadn’t been lying about that.  Bruce had been safe.  Steve was a risk she couldn’t afford to take.  Not back in DC.  And not here.  She feared him turning her away.  She didn’t think she could handle that.  Captain America, the epitome of everything good and strong and virtuous in this world, _throwing her out._ She shouldn’t have cared.  But she did so much that she hadn’t even taken the chance.  She’d run to Bruce instead.  Why else would she have convinced herself that she loved a monster?

This wasn’t who she was.  This wasn’t Black Widow.  She was damn sure of that.

_“You’re unbreakable.”_

She sniffled slightly, shaking her head in rueful acceptance.  “He was the first person since–”  _You._   She had to stop herself from saying that, finally braving a glance at him to find him watching her with those brightly blue eyes of his.  She steadied herself with a shallow breath.  “He was the first person in a long time that I was honest with.”  The bitterness came despite her efforts to contain it.  It tasted too awful to swallow down.  “And he threw that away.  He just left.”  _Abandoned me._   “Didn’t even say goodbye.  How’s that for pathetic?”

The self-deprecating candor made her stomach tighten.  She let her anger be a shield.  Her shield against the pain and sense of loss – _loss of what?  He never told me he loved me or even cared about me_ – and against Steve, so close and watching her so openly.  Just like back in DC.  Maybe he wasn’t a spy or a SHIELD agent, and maybe he was terrible at lying and playing the games people seemed to enjoy so much nowadays.  That _she_ enjoyed so much and won so easily.  But he was proficient at reading her.  “I’m sure he felt something for you,” he said.  “And if he didn’t, well…  I don’t care what anybody else says about him.  He’s the dumbest jackass I’ve ever met.”

That was terrible, the worst, placating drivel he could possibly say.  But its effect was undeniable.  There was _warmth_ in her chest, wonderful warmth, and when she looked at him, she found him smiling that ridiculously sweet smile again.  That ridiculous smile made her lips turn upward in spite of everything.  “You want to know what else I think?” he asked.

She sniffled again, reaching for that water bottle, unscrewing the top, and taking a long drink just to loosen her throat and busy her hands.  She turned to the wall.  “What else do you think, Rogers?”

“You wouldn’t have run away.”

Natasha’s eyes shot back to him.  He was genuine, steadfast.  Not a speck of doubt.  There had been at one point in time.  When she’d lied to him during the mission aboard the _Lemurian Star._   When she’d flirted with him.  When she’d teased and toyed with him.  Now he was certain, trusting in a way she didn’t deserve.  He shifted a little closer, crouching still, to set a tentative hand on her shoulder.  “I’ve never seen you run from anything.  I’ve never seen you give up.  You’re an Avenger.”  She opened her mouth to argue – _that was a dream and it’s not true and you don’t know what I am_ – but she couldn’t.  He was already going on.  “So what if he left?  You’re still here.  That’s gotta mean something.  Barton went home and Thor returned to his world and Stark quit.  Banner ran away.  _But you’re still here._ ”  His hand on her shoulder was a firm weight, strong and grounding.  “And so what if you think you don’t deserve a family?  You have one.  You have us.  You have me.  Maybe it’s screwed up and not the family we should have, but it’s _something_.  It’s the best we can ask for.  It’s enough.  It’s home.”

“Steve–”

“You’re an Avenger, Natasha.  That’s your place for as long as you want it.”

Her place.  Right beside him.

Steve’s smile was knowing, tender.  Loving, if she let herself see it.  She wasn’t sure she was ready to.  For as much as Bruce had hurt her, some part of what she’d felt for him had been real.  Misguided and desperate, but real.  She wasn’t quite prepared to move past that yet.  She looked down at Steve’s hand on her shoulder.  It was callused and sinewy with a broad palm and long fingers.  Then she remembered his hands protecting her down in that bunker, holding her to his chest, letting his body and his shield take blows that would have crushed her.  And she remembered her hands on him as they’d flown from the wreckage of SHIELD, putting pressure on the gunshot wounds, trying in vain to keep the blood in his body.  Her voice, fighting to keep him awake, to keep him from sliding into shock, from dying and leaving her.  And his voice now, yet again telling her exactly what she needed to hear.

They should have never walked away from each other.  Maybe none of this would have happened if she’d just been honest with him right then and there in that cemetery.  If she hadn’t told him to call that nurse he’d never called.  If she hadn’t left to search for something she’d never lost.  She wouldn’t have returned to see him different and distant.  She wouldn’t have compromised herself and run to Bruce.  She wouldn’t have let herself be hurt.  And she wouldn’t have hurt him.

Still, for the first time since that sunny afternoon in DC, she felt like there was a chance they could pick up the pieces.

Steve stood, rising to his full height with nary a look of discomfort considering how long he’d been there, crouching in front of her.  He looked down on her, concern still obvious in his eyes, before tipping his head toward the door.  “You sure you don’t want some dinner?  Come on.  I’ll buy.”

She smiled faintly, shaking her head.  “No.”

He was disappointed.  She could see it.  He waited another moment in case she’d change her mind.  Then he sighed.  “Alright.  See you in the morning.”

He walked away and was gone from her line of sight.  There was the monotonous gray of the wall, the emptiness.  She might not be ready to move on, but the thought of sitting there _alone_ …  “Steve.”

Steve stopped just a few steps from the door.  “Yeah?”

“Would you…”  She turned, fighting to find her bravery.  Meeting his gaze, she found it.  This was pathetic, but, surprisingly, it wasn’t as hard to ask as it might have been.  “Would you stay with me?  Just for a little while.”

His expression softened with something she couldn’t quite discern.  Happiness.  Relief.  Affection.  All of that and more.  A promise.  “Sure.”  He came back and this time he sat right beside her on the mats.  He crossed his legs, his knee just barely brushing her thigh.  The slightest touch was enthralling, a precursor perhaps to things she was only now letting herself realize that she wanted to experience.  The silence that returned wasn’t quite comfortable, but it was a far sight better than it had been.  They lingered, neither moving closer, eyes on the wall across the way.  “So this is what we do then.”  The corner of his mouth quirked in an amused grin.  “Just stare at it?”

“Yeah,” she agreed.  “It’s fun, isn’t it?”

He grunted a little chuckle.  “Yeah.”

So they stared.  It wasn’t long before he grew a little bolder.  A little braver.  He subtly slipped closer to her, and his arm slid around her back.  It was hard not to jump at his touch, but she didn’t.  And then she grew a little bolder and braver, too.  She carefully, tentatively, wove her fingers through his and pulled his arm tighter around her body.  She sank into his side, into warmth and security.  Into strength and stability.  Acceptance, but a challenge to be more.  To be better.  Comfort and a place where she could find happiness.  _Home._

And when she accepted that, her eyes burned again.  The raw ache of her heart that she’d been ignoring for days was still demanding its due.  There was pain, but there was also relief.  So much relief.  A tear tracked its way down her cheek.  She didn’t care.  All she knew was that it felt good – so good and so _right_ – when he squeezed her hand, silently and gently tearing down the walls between them, before she let him in.

**THE END**


End file.
